NJ Transit's head of rail operations to retire in March

Gov. Phil Murphy announces his choice of Kevin Corbett to be the Executive Director of NJ Transit during a presser at Amtrak/NJ Transit station in New Brunswick on 01/30/18.
Mitsu Yasukawa/Northjersey.com

Acting Transportation Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti speaks to the media on Jan. 30, flanked by Gov. Phil Murphy, left, and Kevin Corbett, who has been appointed executive director of NJ Transit.(Photo: Mitsu Yasukawa/Northjersey.com)

The head of NJ Transit's train operations will retire next month, leaving a major leadership gap in the troubled agency.

Robert Lavell, NJ Transit's vice president and general manager of rail operations, has told Executive Director Steven Santoro that he intends to retire in March, according to Nancy Snyder, an agency spokeswoman.

Santoro himself has said he will step down in April after 18 months as the agency's chief.

Last month, Gov. Phil Murphy picked infrastructure executive Kevin Corbett to become NJ Transit's next leader, and also announced a top-to-bottom review of the agency's finances and personnel practices.

In internal and external memos, Lavell noted the drain of experienced personnel from the agency in the months leading up to the fatal Hoboken Terminal crash in September 2016. One person was killed and more than 100 others were injured in the incident.

Lavell wrote in June 2016 to Dennis Martin, then interim executive director, that the departures of senior rail supervisors robbed the agency of a viable succession plan.

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The next month, he wrote to the Federal Railroad Administration that a quarter of the railroad's managers, a total of 93, had left since January 2014.

Roughly 30 of those found better-paying jobs at agencies from Connecticut to Florida, and most of the rest retired, according to a document The Record and NorthJersey.com obtained from the Federal Railroad Administration.